Royal Holiday
By: Jasmine Guillory
Published Year: 2019
Publisher: Berkley
Pages: 304
Summary (Provided by Goodreads): Vivian Forest has been out of the country a grand total of one time, so when she gets the chance to tag along on her daughter Maddie’s work trip to England to style a royal family member, she can’t refuse. She’s excited to spend the holidays taking in the magnificent British sights, but what she doesn’t expect is to become instantly attracted to a certain private secretary, his charming accent, and unyielding formality.
Malcolm Hudson has worked for the Queen for years and has never given a personal, private tour—until now. He is intrigued by Vivian the moment he meets her and finds himself making excuses just to spend time with her. When flirtatious banter turns into a kiss under the mistletoe, things snowball into a full-on fling.
Despite a ticking timer on their holiday romance, they are completely fine with ending their short, steamy affair come New Year’s Day. . .or are they?
First Impressions
I have read two of Guillory’s previous novels (The Wedding Date and The Proposal) and have enjoyed them. They’re always fun, even though the writing isn’t the strongest. I am a sucker for anything that involves England so I barely read the description before adding this book to my TBR.
What I thought
My friend Carly received a copy of this book after winning a Goodreads Giveaway, so she did give me a bit of a review before I started it. She hated this book. All she talked about was how terribly written this book was and that she was going to start a drinking game for how many times “scones” are mentioned in this book. Needless to say, I no longer had high expectations for this book and was solely reading it to see just how bad it was. In fact, I kept a post-it now in the front of the book to count how many times “scones” are mentioned.
Vivian heads to London with her daughter Maddie over the week of Christmas when Maddie is offered the opportunity to style the Duchess at the last minute. While there, she meets Malcom, who is the first black secretary to the Queen. They immediately hit it off and start a whirlwind vacation romance.
45 (possibly 49, I couldn’t remember if there was one time that I actually tallied the 4 scone mentions) scones. In the first 40 pages it was said 20 times. I felt like every other word out of Vivian’s mouth was “Scone”. If it wasn’t scone it was “Oh my God. I couldn’t possibly…” I don’t think I’ve ever rolled my eyes so hard. Vivian is supposed to be 54, but easily reads like she’s 22. She doesn’t think she deserves anything and is constantly giggling and confused by British slang. If I had to read one more time about her basically being like “hehehe the British say things funny!” I was going to chuck the book across the room.
The writing in this book is shamefully poor. I honestly don’t understand how it got published. The only thing I can think of is that she has a contract to write a certain amount of books and they hit the deadline where this one needed to be ready and just shipped it off. The second half does get a little better (much less mentions of scones and those silly British words), but still not great.
Vivian got on my nerves, so it was difficult to get into her romance with Malcom. I didn’t dislike them together or anything like that, I just didn’t connect with either of them. Especially when Malcom all of a sudden went moody, but I only knew he was moody because he said so.
For as much fun as The Wedding Date and The Proposal were, this is the absolute opposite. The only redeeming quality for me about this book was that it was quick. I’m thankful that I had a friend who had read this book before me so I could vent to her about so many of the ridiculous things that happened. Unfortunately, this book has given me pause when it comes to reading Guillory’s future novels.